


The Last Trelos

by Island_of_Reil



Category: Doctrine of Labyrinths - Sarah Monette
Genre: Child Soldiers, Dark Magic, Empathy, Flashbacks, Friendship, Gen, Guilt, Implied/Referenced Canonical Sexual Abuse, Military Backstory, Non-Graphic Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-17
Updated: 2018-01-17
Packaged: 2019-03-05 20:38:46
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,150
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13395798
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Island_of_Reil/pseuds/Island_of_Reil
Summary: Mildmay has more in common with Gideon than he might have thought.





	The Last Trelos

**Author's Note:**

  * For [gonergone](https://archiveofourown.org/users/gonergone/gifts).



> Happy Chocolate Box, gonergone. I hope you like the fic.

It was about an indiction after our little pleasure trip to the Bastion. Felix and Gideon’d had another argument after dinner and it ended up with Felix saying his parts out loud, which wasn’t never a good sign. Then he grabbed that screaming-loud coat of his and walked out without saying nothing to neither me or Gideon.

Gideon’d looked really pissed off, and he still looked pissed off but he kind of sagged a little once the door slammed. I wasn’t in too great a mood neither. It wasn’t like nothing had _happened_ today, just the usual sidelong looks from the annemer lords and most of the hocuses. But some days I took that better than others, and this was one of the others. I hadn’t even talked to Mehitabel in days, along of how the Empyrean was deep in dress rehearsals for _The Tragedy of Horatio_ and so she’d been pretty much living at the Velvet Tears the last decad. Simon and Rinaldo were off in Monspulchra visiting Simon’s sister and brother-in-law and their brood. And Felix — well, Felix ain’t the kind of guy you look to cheer you up when you’re feeling down.

Anyway Gideon caught my eye and pointed at the deck of cards on the table. I said, “Long Tiffany?”, and he nodded, and we started playing. Him and Felix and I’d worked out a system of hand gestures for bids and whatnot so he didn’t have to put his cards down too often to write on his tablet.

After a while though he did put down his hand. I was losing bad, though it didn’t matter too much because we weren’t playing for money. He didn’t pick up the tablet and stylus but pulled one of his “saver” notes, the sort he didn’t want to have to write over and over again, out of his pocket.

_Are you all right?_

“Yeah,” I said, probably too quick. He raised his eyebrows. “No, really, I’m okay,” I said. He just kept his eyes on me, like a kept-thief’s on a mark, until I put my own cards down and I said, “Yeah, okay. It’s just the usual.” I waved my hand in the rough direction of the Hall of the Chimeras. “Ain’t none of ‘em wanna see a Lower City assassin around here. Especially not the one who killed Cerberus Cresset.” And Cornell Teverius. But I wasn’t about to get into that with Gideon or anyone else.

He still had his eyes on me, but not in the same way. He looked sympathetic, which honestly was worse than him looking suspicious. Finally he kind of sighed with his mouth closed and held up his forefinger for a second. Then he got paper, ink, and a pen. I guessed whatever he had to say was going to be on the long side and easier to write on paper than in wax.

It didn’t take him all that long to write, him being used to writing, even though he was taking care to make the letters regular for me. The paper he finally handed me said, _Obviously my situation is not yours. But know that they happily play host to a docker’s brat from Thrax who helped kill two dozen wizards at the age of fourteen and has killed many more people since._

“Kethe,” I said, even though it took me a few seconds more to remember that a dozen was a septad and five.

Gideon set the pen and ink aside and picked up the tablet and stylus. _Want to see?_

“‘See’? How?”

He reached out and tapped the side of my head, then tapped the side of his own.

“You’re gonna have me … look inside your head?”

_In a way._

“Uh … am I gonna be okay afterward?” Because, not like I remember most of it but Strych did some bad shit to my dreams, and not like Gideon was anything like Strych but maybe that kind of thing had side effects that hocuses couldn’t totally control.

Gideon gave me an emphatic nod that made his curls bounce. “Okay. But ain’t that heresy?” He jabbed his thumb toward his chest and shook his head. “Ah, right, you ain’t Cabaline.” But I still must’ve looked about as eager as a Pharoahlight whore with a leper for a client, because Gideon picked up the tablet again.

_It’s a story. You like stories._

“Yeah, okay. You got me dead to rights,” I said, and even though I still wasn’t too sure about this I gave him a grin.

Gideon smiled and closed his eyes. And I wasn’t in our suite no more.

*

Before I can see anything, even before I can hear it, I can feel it. Juggernaut, each tick like a body hitting the ground right next to me. The last time I heard it I had blood in my mouth and a shit-ton of fresh welts, and I can taste it on my teeth and feel ‘em stinging on my back and thighs. I swallow hard. I should’ve figured on Juggernaut, I tell myself. I wait.

Then all of a sudden I’m looking into a big unframed mirror on an otherwise bare wall. I get a shock, because it ain’t me who’s looking back. It’s a kid, just barely done with his second septad. Then I get a second shock because it’s Gideon. His face is softer and rounder and his eyes are bigger inside it, but it’s him all right.

His eyes ain’t big just along of his age. They’re full of fear. And I can feel that fear all wound up in my chest and gut, because in this hocus dream the Gideon I know pulled me into, I’m teenage him, standing there in front of the mirror. Fear of what I been ordered to do tonight, fear of what if I don’t survive it, fear of what if I do, and — most of all — fear of what this one person is going to have to say if I fuck it up.

I’m not only kid-Gideon in this dream, I’m still me, too, so I think, boy, do I know all about that. Then I remember that letter Lord Thaddeus wrote Felix about Gideon last year, not too long before Strych happened. Fuck, do I know all about that.

I watch my hands shake trying to knot my cravat. They’re brown, rough-skinned, nails bitten to the quick. Finally I get the knot right and step back and look at the whole picture. Black shirt under the red cravat, smart red jacket with matching trousers, shiny black boots up to the knee, red-and-black pillbox with a visor. There’s a dozen pins in my hair and I still got curls coming loose from out under the hat, which is a uniform infraction. I’d cut my hair, except that one person don’t want me to. And I can’t pomade it down because the smell of pomade makes me retch. All the officers use pomade. After two minutes of fussing with it I just say fuck it, who gives a shit about my hair right now, this ain’t a dress parade, and anyway it’ll be darker than the bottom of the Sim. The little flash of anger gives me the wind to stick my dagger into my belt sheath and march out of the dormitory and down the first of a septad of long corridors out to the north gate. At first my boots are out of time with Juggernaut, but they fall into cadence real fast. Everyone in the Bastion falls into cadence real fast.

Time moves different in the hocus dream. The next moment I don’t feel Juggernaut no more. I’m in a sweaty saddle in grass up to my sweaty horse’s knees, and so are septads of other kids in uniform around me and more septads of officers in front of us. I know in this dream I’m at least five miles north of the Bastion, though if I turned around I could see the ugly lump of it on the horizon. The moon’s behind clouds, and we can’t call up chrysanthemum lights or use lanterns because we don’t want them to see us ’til the last second, but we all got pretty good night vision. We ain’t relying on our five senses alone, anyway.

The enemy ain’t relying on theirs, neither. I don’t know what they call themselves but the dream tells me the Bastion calls ‘em the Treloi, which is Kekropian for crazies. They’re three or four septads of hocuses who’ve escaped the Bastion one by one or two by two over the years. There’s a few rogue hocuses on the run from the law in Skaar or the Norvenas along with ‘em, but mostly they’re Eusebians, and some of ‘em are damn powerful. So they know how to tweak the Bastion’s monitoring spells to stay out of sight and pass for annemers, and their magic pooled together’s pretty strong. You’d think they’d want to put as much land between them and the Bastion as possible, but they got this notion they’re going to raze the place to the ground someday. Which they got as much chance of doing as me, Mildmay, marrying Stephen Teverius, but that’s how they got their name, I guess.

Just as the Bastion’s spells ain’t foolproof, neither are the Treloi’s. Every so often the spies and scryers get wind of ‘em. But while the Bastion would love to make the world’s biggest example of them, trying to capture them’s like trying to hold water in your hand by making a fist. And the Bastion wouldn’t look too good if everyone from the Deep Lands to Troia figured out they can’t bring down three or four septads of lunatic hocuses. So, outside their walls, the Bastion’s official position is that the Treloi are just a legend, a rumor started by Marathine spies and Kekropian malcontents who’d like to see the Empire fall.

But, a week ago, this one Trelos managed to break through the wards at the north gate and killed a septad of hocus dragoons before they caught him and … well, me and kid-Gideon, we don’t want to think too hard about what they did to him. So now it’s real fucking personal, not just politics, and General Mercator ordered a big-ass night sally to root the Treloi out. We’re supposed to bring them in alive if we can, but if we can’t then dead’s just as good.

We’re riding on a tiny dot of a village called Amblys. The spies say it used to be home to a small annemer clan, four or five septad people, but most of ‘em died of plague about four months ago and the rest moved on. The Treloi moved in a few decads after that and been using it as one of their bases ever since. Other than Amblys, ain’t much else around besides the grass and, way the fuck off to the west, a herd of buffalo that’s more interested in chowing down than bothering us. You don’t need any kind of light or scrying to know they’re there, along of how the breeze is blowing in from the west right now. But I figure that buffalo should be the worst thing I smell tonight.

Before we headed out, my squadron got our orders from our captain, who’s winding up his third septad. He called me by name and told me to stick close to him. The way he said it, the way his eyes lit on me, I know he wasn’t talking strictly about the battlefield. But he can’t take it any further than that because of that one person I was thinking about earlier. I get this thought that I should be grateful for that, and my belly knots up all over again. I push the thought away, like you learn to do real quick in the Bastion. Anyway I’m riding directly behind him, with the rest of the squadron behind us. The other squadrons are behind their captains, who’re in turn behind the majors and colonels and the brigadier-general.

We got the village in sight and can see most of the huts and outbuildings when there’s a sound like the earth cracking in two and we’re flung, literally _flung,_ backwards. We’re good riders, and we’re on horses bred and trained and warded for hocus battles, so only a couple of the mounts go down, but a few of the other horses are screaming along with them. I can feel my own mount shaking like a leaf and I pat its neck to reassure it while the senior officers rally everyone back into formation. Then there’s another big boom and a fucking wall of fire ten feet high springs up in front of us, and ain’t no horse going to ride through _that._ About two-thirds of our battalion, including my squadron, ride around to the other side of Amblys to get to the Treloi. The other third stays behind to try to put out the fire or, at least, be there in case the Treloi put it out themselves along of the notion that with us in the field it’d be a good time for them to charge the Bastion.

But no, they’re riding ahead of us to the north and they’re real fucking fast. But we got the better horses, and with most of us together and badly outnumbering them and our magic focused tight on them it’s harder for them to hide from it. Finally they stop and spin around with their horses rearing. The Treloi got murder in their eyes. They know they’re going to die, and they want to die here and take as many of us down with them as they can, not die in the Bastion. I would, too. The captain yells, “Thraxios!”, and my heart’s in my throat and my balls are somewhere up around my ribcage and I don’t got no choice except to move forward to join the senior officers in the vanguard. Because if I don’t, the Treloi will kill us, and if they don’t the Bastion will. Soon as I get in place, I pull out my dagger and cut a thin line across the back of my hand.

Now comes the part of the story that makes you get why so many heroic tales of battle are just plain bullshit. Because the truth of it is, whether you’re a hocus or an annemer, war is a lot of noise and screaming and pain and awful sights and stenches, and you can’t tell what the fuck’s going on half the time because everything’s moving around you like a herd of bulls that got into a flashie whorehouse. And you’re shitting-your-trousers scared, or you’re the type that killing people is like a hit of roseblood for you and you’re higher than Astrape, and neither way are you going to be a reliable witness. So even if you took down an entire army single-handed, you ain’t going to remember the half of it later and you have to get bits and pieces from the soldiers around you, who likewise ain’t reliable witnesses. Or you get piss-drunk in a bar and you just make shit up, or someone else makes it up for you.

So, looking through kid-Gideon’s eyes, I can’t really tell you most of what goes on just north of Amblys once we catch up with the Treloi. I know that Gideon, I, throw out hocus shit left and right, as much blood-magic as the Bastion’s taught me, along with the senior officers and a couple other kids who got more powers than kids our age should have. And if you’ve heard all about Brinvillier Strych or Vey Coruscant you know blood-magic’s some nasty shit. The Treloi died bad, if not as bad as they would’ve in the Bastion. You don’t need the details.

Except that there’s this one guy who, I guess you can say, survives. One of the other squadron captains has a real talent for destroying minds. So at the end of the battle, one Trelos is just wandering around all his friends’ corpses, drooling and crying like an overgrown toddler whose mother’s up and left him. And the brigadier-general says just leave him there, not because he’s got any pity for him but because that guy plus the bodies on the ground’ll make for a serious lesson to anyone who thinks they can fuck with the Bastion. Either he’ll die from being alone and unable to take care of himself, or someone else’ll come along and find him and take him to a madhouse. I don’t know which is worse, honestly.

We call up our chrysanthemums, treat our wounded, tend our horses, load up our dead so they can be embalmed at the Bastion for a funeral with full honors, and ride away. I know I shouldn’t, but I look back over my shoulder and see the last Trelos staggering around, howling at a moon that ain’t there for him. My chrysanthemums turn him and his dead friends light-green and the ground around them the color of pine needles.

*

“Sacred bleeding fuck,” I said as soon as I was back in the suite.

The look in Gideon’s eyes gutted me for a split-second. Then he got it under control. He picked up his tablet, his lower lip curling in. _The next day, they made me a lieutenant._

“Powers,” I said. He just sat there looking at me, waiting for me to say something that wasn’t a swear. The first thing that popped into my head was, “You didn’t have to show me none of that.”

He looked ashamed of himself, and I held up my hand. “No — I didn’t mean it like that. I ain’t upset, I seen some shit myself. I mean, you didn’t have to trust me with that story.”

He tilted his head and smiled. I don’t take compliments too good and I could feel my face getting hot, but I didn’t want to clam up on Gideon the way I did on Felix when he was being a prick. So I went for a joke: “Was that supposed to make me feel better?” He did his thing where he was laughing with his mouth shut, and then he picked up his tablet again.

_Maybe less alone?_

“Maybe,” I said.

He was still for a few seconds, and then he wrote, _I still dream about him._

“You weren’t the one that fucked him up,” I said. His mouth flattened out and he shrugged. I nodded. I didn’t kill Margot’s little Badgers, neither.

Another few seconds went by. All I could think to say was, “You up for another round?” Gideon nodded and put the stylus and tablet off to the side again, and I picked up the deck. I won the next few hands.


End file.
